BELLEVUE, WA — 38-year-old Joe Millar of Bellevue experienced a satisfying surge of adrenaline Friday upon his discovery of Twitter, the so-called "micro-blogging" internet service founded in March 2006.

When he received the new account email from Twitter, Millar was completely overwhelmed by a totally undeserved sense of tech savvy. According to internet experts (i.e. teenagers), over six million users managed to discover Twitter before Millar.

Every 30GB Zune on the planet broke down this morning in a massive worldwide software freeze. Even here at The Naked Loon we were affected. In order to provide continuing, up-to-the-minute coverage of this important worldwide crisis, we are proud to present the live 30GB Zune webcam below.

Meteorologists at the University of Washington issued a warning to Pacific Northwest residents Wednesday for an extreme weather system this winter.

"We have recently weathered both El Niño and her little sister La Niña," said UW meteorologist Stan Cooper. But the danger looming on the horizon is far worse. "Citizens should prepare for the worst this winter as Basura Blanca, El Niño's drunken neighbor, hits the Northwest in full force."

As flood waters began to recede Thursday on the Snoqualmie and Tolt rivers in east King County, baffled scientists are attempting to understand the strange unpredictable phenomenon that caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to area residents.

Dozens of homes, businesses, and roads were flooded this week in what scientists describe as "a bizarre and incredibly unlikely combination of events."

As striking machinists returned to work on Monday, Renton-based Boeing engineer Mark Waring took a celebratory day off, to reward himself for achieving a major life goal: finally reaching level 50 in the web-based game Defend Your Castle.

After many hours of intense labor throughout the machinists' strike, Waring finally was able to break past level 42, which had been the furthest level he had been able to achieve in the previous three hundred games.

In a hand-written note wrapped around a brick thrown through a Seattle City Hall window, San Francisco-based Google Inc. reiterated its position Wednesday that they will "never, ever, not in a thousand million years be bringing Street View to Seattle."

The message from the internet giant cleared up confusion among Seattle residents, a number of whom reported spotting Google Street View cars roaming area streets over four months ago...

With the future looking bleaker by the day in the face of unprecedented economic meltdown, tens of thousands of people across the country are turning to sterilization to help them cope with the disaster.

Clinics in virtually every city in America have been flooded with requests for sterilization from middle-age professionals, teens barely out of puberty, and everyone in between. Without exception, those receiving the procedures have cited the country's dismal, expensive future as explanation.

PIKE PLACE MARKET, SEATTLE – A deadly strain of Hinternoccoci bacteria was soundly thwarted in its attempt to spread from a public toilet seat to the butt-cheek of area man Todd Stanley Tuesday.

Before taking his seat on the public toilet, Stanley carefully removed a paper toilet seat cover from the "Health Guard" dispenser in the stall, placing it squarely on the communal throne.

Software pirates raided the Redmond offices of Microsoft this weekend, stealing thousands of copies of Windows, Office, and other software valued at over $2 million.

The burglary is the latest in an ongoing battle between Microsoft and the software pirates, whose ongoing thefts of retail-packaged software cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

"These robberies are costly to us," said Microsoft spokeswoman Jill Jakes, "but the real victim here is the customer. Every copy of Windows Vista Ultimate Edition that is stolen by pirates is a copy that we can't sell to a customer for three hundred and twenty dollars."

]]> http://nakedloon.com/news/sci-tech/2008/09/08/software-pirates-steal-2-million-in-weekend-raid-on-microsoft-offices/feed/ 1 http://nakedloon.com/news/sci-tech/2008/08/30/gaming-geeks-convert-seattle-to-ultimate-nerdtopia/ http://nakedloon.com/news/sci-tech/2008/08/30/gaming-geeks-convert-seattle-to-ultimate-nerdtopia/#comments Sat, 30 Aug 2008 13:00:17 +0000 John Fostr http://nakedloon.com/?p=1400

Seattle's electric grid faces the ultimate challenge this weekend as tens of thousands of video game nerds from all corners of the country descend upon downtown, gadgets and games in hand for the Penny Arcade Expo, a three-day nerdtopia at the Washington State Convention Center.

Well over fifty thousand socially awkward, sun-starved nerds and geeks packed the convention center to the gills as the expo got underway Friday. Ultranerd video game writer Ken Levine kicked off the ceremonies as the keynote speaker, inspiring the pasty masses with the tale of his personal transformation from socially awkward child to socially awkward adult.

A group of UW weather scientists claimed responsibility on Monday for ruining Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels' inaugural "car free day" on Capitol Hill yesterday.

Calling themselves the Reactionary Anti-Initiative Network, the scientists explained that Sunday's downpour was the result of weeks of careful planning and precision actions.

"When Mayor Nickels announced 'car free days,' we knew we had to do something," said project lead Bernard Studemacher. "Weather is what we know, so naturally it was our preferred weapon."

The Washington State Department of Ecology slapped Mount St. Helens with a $250 million fine on Thursday for flagrant and repeated violations of state air quality regulations.

From late 2004 through July this year the 40,000-year-old volcano maintained a daily schedule that included emitting hundreds of tons of sulfur dioxide—a noxious gas that can cause acid rain and breathing problems leading to serious health issues such as death.

Despite Washington industry's best efforts to maintain the top spot, the scofflaw mountain emitted more of the lung-burning fumes every day throughout its nearly four-year period of recent activity than all of Washington's industries combined.

Disaster struck the U District Monday, as a 6-foot, three-hundred-pound man-mouse hybrid escaped from containment at the University of Washington's Comparative Genomics Center (CGC) and rampaged through the neighborhood, leaving a trail of terrified children and weirded out adults in its wake.

"It was awful," said U District resident Penny Orting. "It just came out of nowhere and started waving its hands all over the place, slowly walking toward the children... and they just stood there, paralyzed with fear."

The genetic abomination is the result of ten years of study at the CGC. A secret project codenamed "Icy Smoke Emu" was funded by $82 million obtained through an innocuous-looking line-item for "test vials" in the biology department's annual budget.

A recent survey conducted by the Seattle-based Tech Trends Research Institute (TTRI) found that a surprisingly high two percent of US consumers give a crap about Blu-ray high-definition video discs.

The results come as something of a blow to the Blu-ray Disc Association, a thinly-veiled front operation run by Sony Corporation, who had hoped consumers would jump at the chance to replace their perfectly functional DVDs with incrementally better Blu-ray discs priced twice as high.

"It doesn't make sense," said Jorge McManus, a representative for Sony Corporation of America. "We beat HD-DVD like, five months ago. Why aren't people lining up to give us money?"

As the video game trade show E3 wrapped up in Los Angeles today, Microsoft stole the show with their surprise announcement of a revolutionary new game exclusively for the Xbox 360: Barista Barista Revolution.

Scheduled for release in spring 2009, Barista Barista Revolution will put players in the role of a coffee shop barista as they grind, tamp, pull, and steam their way to the perfect espresso, in rhythm to the beat of dozens of today's top hits.

"We're really pumped about this innovative new game," said lead developer John Parker...

Hot on the heels of a recent Louisiana victory in the fight against evolution, the Seattle-based think tank Discovery Institute held a press conference Thursday to announce their latest initiative: defeating the myth of gravity.

Robert Crowther, Discovery's director of communications was visibly excited as he detailed the Institute's plan for attacking what he refers to as the sloppy, inaccurate, and overtly biased portrayal of the theory of gravity.

"Gravity is just a theory, and a poorly-supported one at that," said Crowther...

In the wake of last week's seemingly dire news that ice at the North Pole is on track to melt by September, climatologists have come forward with news that somewhat softens the blow. According to a growing number of scientists, melting arctic ice tastes absolutely delicious—far better than any bottled water currently on the market.

"Recent Arctic warming is quite dramatic," said Jolene Townsend, a climatologist at the University of Washington, "but so is the American appetite for pure, fresh-tasting bottled water." Townsend described the scenario as a win-win since really who lives in the Arctic anyway—nobody, that's who.

"If I weren't so busy breathlessly spreading global warming alarmism, I would bottle this stuff and sell it myself," said University of Colorado climatologist Steven Wiltshire...

Taking full advantage of the recent explosive popularity of hybrid vehicles, Honda has unveiled their latest breakthrough in automotive technology: the octabrid car.

"Continuing the tradition of innovation that we began with the Insight, Honda is proud to announce our exciting new car," said a press release from Honda. "The new Honda Stan is powered by eight different fuel sources, making it four times better than the hybrids on the market today."

In lieu of a traditional gas-powered engine, the Honda Stan is equipped with a cutting-edge drive system that converts eight sources of energy into motion...